That Was Then

by That Was Then (retail) (epub)

  This was like poetry, beautiful and sad. ‘ I meant it,’ I said, ‘about being sorry. It must be so bloody painful.’

  ‘Not yet. But it will be.’

  ‘Can’t you take matters into your own hands?’ She looked at me steadily as I sought a form of words. ‘Head the train off at the pass?’

  ‘I’m not going to end it, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘I’m only thinking of you, Helen, that it might be less painful to seize the initiative.’

  She shook her head. ‘I want him for as long as I can have him.’

  I tried a different tack. ‘But what about your pride?’

  She gave a little half-smile. ‘That isn’t a concept with which I’m familiar.’

  ‘Then maybe it’s time you familiarised yourself. I don’t know how you can bear simply to sit out there in Hawley End waiting to be ditched by a man who, if I may make so bold, simply isn’t worth it.’

  There was a pause, during which she gazed about the room. I found that I was holding my breath. When she spoke, it was so quietly and offhandedly she might have been talking to herself.

  ‘Nevertheless, it’s what I intend to do.’

  She enraged me, she really did. After I’d dropped her back at the cottage I found myself praying, through gritted teeth, that if Kerridge was cooling, Catherine would come good.

  There was a message on the answering machine. I perched on the edge of a chair and played it through more than once.

  ‘Er … hello, this is a message for Mrs Eve Piercy … I guess that must be your son on the machine. This is Charles McNally calling from London, I wondered if you’re ever up in town whether you’d care to have dinner, or do a show. Anything that takes your fancy, I’m the new kid in town. Give me a call if you feel like it, I’m at Troughtons in Vane Street.’

  He ended with the number. When I’d finished listening for the third time I switched the machine back to receive, and stood staring out at the sea. The wind had dropped today, but the sky was still overcast and the sunset was a sullen affair, skulking behind dirty hedges of cloud.

  The ball had been put well and truly in my court. Thank goodness, I thought, that I hadn’t been here when he called. On the other hand, I had been given time to think, which increased the need to make a sensible and considered decision. My responsibility weighed heavy on me.

  I was all at sea. Following our conversations at the weekend I might have suspected my daughter’s hand in this new development, except that that was clearly ridiculous – why would a man of McNally’s age and stature be even remotely influenced by a twenty-something upstart like Mel, even assuming she had the brass neck to approach him on the subject? It was unthinkable.

  I poured myself a whisky and tried to be rational. I was out of practise. I couldn’t deny that a small part of me was flattered, but a far greater part just wished to be left alone. I had no need of all this and I was damn sure he didn’t either. He must spend most of his waking hours in contact with clever, sophisticated, independent-minded women who shared a similar kind of life.

  I tried first to think what I would have said if I had picked up the phone in the first place.

  ‘Charles – what a surprise. How are you? Excellent. My daughter told me you were in London for a while. Yes, I do get up very occasionally. But it’s not really my cup of tea, I like to be down here by the sea. How sweet of you, what a very happy thought. Can I bear it in mind? As I say I’m only rarely in town, but if I do come up in the foreseeable future I shall certainly bear that in mind. Good luck with the househunting, Charles, I don’t envy you. Bye.’

  In my dreams.

  I cudgelled my brain for another helpful template. What, I wondered, would Sabine have said in these circumstances?

  ‘Chuck, mon cheri, when are you coming to see us—’

  Stop right there, I told myself. That ‘us’ put the kibosh on Sabine as a role model. She might be the queen of savoire faire, but she was still wed wealthily, and as far as I knew happily, to Martin.

  There was nothing else for it, I was going to have to make my own excuses. Or not call back at all. But that might prompt him to call again, to check that I’d received the message … There again that was a terrifically un-cool thing to do, so perhaps he wouldn’t.…

  I was dithering for Britain. The Scotch went down without touching the sides. How, I asked myself, had I had the nerve to think disparagingly of Helen, who next to me was a positive virago of determination and self-esteem? Her affair might be dead in the water, but I was too frightened to get my feet wet!

  If I was going to call him one thing was for sure – I needed a prepared line, one which presented me in the best possible light (I was vain enough not to wish to lose his good opinion) but still achieve the desired outcome: no dice.

  As I sat there Ben came in and stood in the hall, looking in at me, his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Who died?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘That’s OK then. Mind if I go to bed, I’m knackered.’

  ‘No, you carry on.’ I got up and went into the hall. We were both dragging our footsteps a little. I felt the same bat’s-wing of unease, that had nothing to do with my own dilemma.

  ‘Ben—’

  He was almost at his bedroom door and even now he only half-turned – he was still heading away from me.

  ‘Yeah.’

  I realised that I didn’t know what I was going to say, only that I wanted to detain him for a moment.

  ‘How was Sophie?’

  ‘Sophie?’

  ‘Yes – you’ve been out with her, have you?’

  ‘Oh, right – yes, earlier on. But she went back, she had to do some work.’

  ‘But everything’s all right, is it?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Good.’

  He still stood there in his slightly awkward attitude, neither with me nor gone from me. His natural ease of manner seemed for the moment to have deserted him and it made me unhappy so that I went over and kissed him impulsively.

  ‘Night love.’ I stroked his cheek. ‘You smell nice.’

  Did I imagine it, or did he without moving draw slightly away, just perceptibly shrink inside his skin …?

  ‘Night, Mum.’

  After I was in bed I heard him in the bathroom. Usually there was a flurry of tooth-cleaning, the loo being flushed, and then the click of the light pull as he emerged. This time there was an additional sound, that of water being run into the basin, and vigorous, prolonged washing. Only a few days ago this determined purging of a girl’s scent would have struck me as rather sweet. But tonight, staring blankly at my book, it failed to make me smile.

  The next morning we went through our usual routine. On the way out I picked up the post, which included a postcard from Ronnie and Dennis in the Auvergne.

  ‘So much for a single Europe,’ remarked Ben laconically. ‘Even from France the postcards still arrive after the people get back.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I asked, closing the door behind us.

  ‘The Chatsworth olds are home. Couple of days ago.’

  ‘Are you sure? Ronnie said they were going for a fortnight.’

  ‘Dead sure. Simon’s back from Newquay, he told me in the pub …’ His voice faded as he headed in the direction of town.

  I climbed into the car and pondered the postcard. It held no clues. The picture was of smooth, green, flower-scattered hills. The message, written by Ronnie in her large flowing hand, was perfectly standard: ‘We’re sleeping, walking, eating and drinking. Glorious sunshine which they say is going to last. Not a tennis court in sight so I’ll have some catching up to do when I get back, but you won’t find me complaining, Love, R and D.’

  I decided not to go round. Whatever domestic disaster had brought the Chatsworths back from France early, it would be kinder to leave them to report it. On the drive to work I also shoved my vague concerns about Ben to the back of my mind. Ian – a worrier in the professional but not the
personal arena – had always maintained that there was no use in fretting over those things you could do nothing about, a theory which displayed a total lack of understanding of the true worrier’s pysche. I might have closed the door on those worries for the moment, but I knew they would rattle the latch persistently till readmitted.

  Fortunate for me, perhaps, that I had something more immediate about which a decision had to be made – Charles McNally’s invitation. On the principle that disinterest provides the best advice, I invited Jo to have lunch with me at Roots, a health-food bar, and laid the situation before her.

  ‘Sounds like you’ve netted him,’ was her first comment. ‘ Let me be the first to say congratulations.’

  ‘Thanks Jo, but no thanks.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You don’t want to get involved.’

  ‘No.’

  She mopped up salad dressing with a heel of stone-ground bread. ‘So what exactly’s the difficulty?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Just say no.’ She delivered the formula on a sing-song note.

  ‘But I don’t want to seem rude.’

  ‘You don’t have to be rude. But you do have to be firm. There’s no point in making an excuse, because excuses run out. And if you’re never going to see him again, what does it matter what he thinks of you?’

  There was no answer to that – it was a good point, which did nothing to improve my state of mind.

  When we left Roots we went our separate ways back to the office, because Jo needed to go the post office to re-licence her car. Crossing Memorial Gardens I was astonished to see Pearl and Nozz sitting on the grass near the fountain. I pretended not to see them, because I was sure that Pearl would rather die than acknowledge me.

  But I’d reckoned without the amiable Nozz.

  ‘How y’doing?’

  ‘Oh, hello …!’ I feigned pleased surprised and walked over to them. Pearl gave me a lowering look over the bottle of Hooch she held in heavily beringed, green-nailed fingers. ‘ Hi Pearl.’

  ‘OK?’

  I turned my attention back to Nozz. ‘Taking a long lunch hour? It’s a nice day for it.’

  ‘You can’t work all the time,’ he agreed.

  Pearl jerked her head in his direction. ‘He’s taking a leaf out of Ben’s book.’

  ‘Ben’s?’

  ‘All work and no play,’ explained Nozz. ‘Nothing we can teach Ben about long lunch hours. Quality of life’s the important thing.’

  This was incontrovertible, if a bit suprising coming from Nozz, who had never struck me as a grey wage-slave sort of guy. His next remark was even more surprising.

  ‘How’s the new relationship?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Ben’s new woman.’

  ‘Fine. She seems nice.’

  I just caught the expression of sheer vitriol on Pearl’s face.

  ‘No,’ said Nozz, as if he’d seen it too. ‘Fair play to them. Looks like the real thing.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ I said, pathetically grateful for this unlooked-for boost to my hopes.

  ‘Only my opinion.’

  Pearl made no comment, but slid her plump lips off the end of the bottle with a moist plop. Cheered by Nozz’s observations I chose not to think of this as rude. After all, the girl had been dumped by Ben, why would she want to extol his latest love?

  I was back in the office first. When Jo came in she came straight over to my desk.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’ve had some time to think, in the queue from hell. I do realise these things are a lot easier in theory than in practice. First up, you do need to be dead sure you want to say no.’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  ‘In that case, say it.’

  The next day, the day the rest of Mrs Rymer’s things were being sold, I told Ben during our shared three minutes in the kitchen that I had seen Pearl.

  ‘And how was she?’ he asked with a downward, let’s-get-this-over-with inflection.

  ‘She was taking the sun with Nozz, in the gardens.’

  ‘Pearl out of doors? She must be pushed.’

  ‘They said they were taking a leaf out of your book.’

  ‘Of course I’m never out of Memorial Gardens.’

  He was in a foul temper, it wasn’t like him. ‘ No,’ I said. ‘Nozz said you’d been having long lunch hours. He put it down to love.’

  ‘He did, did he?’ Ben picked up his coffee. ‘What a simple soul he is.’

  The sale left Mrs Rymer two thousand richer. As promised, after I’d done the paperwork for her son and daughter-in-law I sent a handwritten note suggesting we go out for lunch on Sunday. As I wrote it, I thought how surprised she would be if she knew just how much I was looking forward to seeing her. I said that unless I heard to the contrary, I’d pick her up at half past twelve.

  Desma called in the evening, about tennis.

  ‘Are you on for a singles?’

  ‘I would be,’ I said, ‘but did you know Ronnie had to come home early, so she might be available?’

  ‘I did know, because Rick bumped into her at the doctor’s when he went about Bryony’s grommets. The poor thing’s got a recurrence of that wretched virus, apparently. There was no question of her having a good time, so it seemed more sensible to both of them to come back and put the doctor back on the case.’

  ‘Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘Yes, she was very pissed off, but they’ve put her on a course of something, so we’ll just have to see.…’

  ‘What about Sabine?’

  ‘Yes, well that’s the thing, Sabine can’t play either. Martin’s taking Sophie to some agricultural show or other and she’s got to stay in for the men doing maintenance on the pool. Must be tough being loaded. So anyway, it looks like singles or bust.’ I hesitated, she waited. ‘Please, Eve.’

  ‘I’m not playing very well at the moment.’

  ‘Sounds good to me. Look, I’d like to see you, I’m not like everyone else, tennis is the highlight of my week. We could just play the best of seven and then go to the Cutter.’

  I laughed. ‘If you put it like that.’

  ‘Great! See you there.’

  I sent some flowers to Ronnie with a card expressing commiserations about the curtailment of their holiday, and telling her to get in touch as soon as she felt up to it. On Saturday morning there was a note from Mrs Rymer accepting my invitation. Ben was still in bed when I left for tennis, having responded tersely to my wake-up call that he was having this Saturday off. Could he, I wondered, be going to the agricultural show with Martin and Sophie? That would certainly be proof, if proof were needed, of an undying passion.

  Desma and I called it a day – and an honourable draw – after two short sets. Our game scored low on both technical merit and artistic impression, but high on hard graft – we both dug in on the base line and scurried back and forth making a lot of uncultured, labour intensive shots. By the end of it we had worked up a virtuous sweat.

  Over beer and sandwiches in the Cutter Bar (without the other two we went cheap and cheerful) we agreed that it had definitely been worth the effort.

  ‘And anyway,’ added Desma, ‘I need to keep up my Saturday outings, because they keep Rick off the streets.’

  ‘That’s important, is it?’ I asked carefully, betraying no anticipation of the anwer.

  ‘At the moment. I think he’s being tempted, Eve, so this is one small thing I can do to keep him out of temptation’s way. There’s nothing like a lively toddler to nip illicit romance in the bud.’

  I was flabbergasted. ‘Desma! You’re not serious?’

  ‘Pretty serious.’ Her cheeks were pink as she took a pull at her beer.

  ‘But that’s awful.’

  ‘It is a bit of a bummer, but I’m surprised at how practical I feel about it. After all, come on, he is gorgeous.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Remember that song, “When You’re In Love With a Beautiful Woman” – well it�
��s the same but the other way round.’

  ‘There’s a line “You watch your friends”,’ I said. ‘I hope you don’t feel you have to do that.’

  ‘Of course not! Eve!’ She was reproachful ‘But I know everyone wonders how on earth I snared him, and the answer is I haven’t a clue, but snare him I did and there was always a chance someone was going to come along and test the rope.’

  I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Do you have any idea—’

  ‘No, and I don’t want to. I don’t care about her, only about us. It may not even have got very far, but any distance is far enough.’

  ‘Have you talked to Rick about it?’

  ‘Not yet. It sounds silly, but I don’t want to hear him squirm, or have to lie about it. I want the whole thing to stop before it comes to that.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit optimistic?’ I asked gently. ‘I mean, if he thinks you don’t know, or perhaps don’t care, human nature being what it is.…’

  ‘Ah, but I know my husband. He’s not very brave,’ she said bluntly. ‘If I ever get clear evidence of anything I shall deliver an ultimatum, never fear. But till then, you know, I love him, and –’ she took a short, deep breath – ‘and I want him to do the right thing off his own bat.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. I wanted to hug her. ‘Good luck, Desma.’

  It was one of those curious coincidences that when I set out for a walk that afternoon (Ben had left a BIZZY BACKSUN note on the kitchen table) I actually saw the Shaws down on the beach, a little further along from Cliff Mansions on the more deserted stretch opposite the cricket club. Bryony was tottering, bending, falling, tottering on again in her small red wellies. Her parents, in close attendance, were nonetheless absorbed in their own conversation. Rick’s hands were in his pockets, Desma’s arm was tucked through his. Heads bowed, they walked in unison, their feet swinging forward together in a slow, trudging march along the shifting stones.

  I, on the other hand, walked briskly, happy to be on my own on this clear, bright afternoon, and to be looking forward to my lunch with Mrs Rymer tomorrow. Perhaps, I reflected, one was never too old to need a wise older woman in one’s life. I had the feeling, not yet tested, that I could say anything to her and that she would be neither shocked nor judgmental. Which was foolish, considering her age. I was secretly, selfishly glad that she was at Whitegates and in effect always available. Had her legs still been able to carry her, and she still able to manage at home, I should not have been able to hide behind this presumption of kindness, of brightening the life of a lonely old person.